I was thinking last week, as I watched my college-age son walk away from me across the campus, as I prepared to drive out of the visitors' parking lot and leave him to his own devices--as I considered that, in truth, I was dry-eyed and reasonably cheerful about doing so--that one is never, ever prepared for the surprises of parenthood. I fully intended to dote upon my infants yet to my dismay discovered that I didn't have a natural touch with babies. I had been led to believe that teenagers would be impossible to stomach but discovered that I adore spending time with those lanky, charming, foolish beings. And I feared that sending my son away to college would sever the easy, comedic affection we'd built up together over his middle and high school years; that he would go his way, and I, in tears, would wend down my own lonely road.

The actuality has been different. The phone rings, mid-afternoon. I pick it up, and there's James, amused to tell me about a course in tinkering he's signed up for. I laugh, we chatter about this and that, and five minutes later I'm back to work or baking and he's back to manning his work-study station in the film building. First thing in the morning, I send him a one-line email announcing that cookies are on the way and asking for his opinion on the Petraeus incident. He responds, briefly, dryly, cogently. We are working out a new conversational strategy.

In Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas Bertram, a reserved, loving, yet uncharismatic father, gradually develops a sweet relationship with his grown-up niece and nephew, Fanny and William, in large part because he discovers that he likes to listen to what they have to say: "Sir Thomas, by no means displeased, prolonged the conversation on dancing in general, and was so well engaged in describing the balls of Antigua, and listening to what his nephew could relate of the different modes of dancing which had fallen within his observation, that he had not heard his carriage announced." This sounds like a minor incident, yet by means of such incidents Sir Thomas discovers the pleasures of a new sort of parenthood, which begins at that moment when we find ourselves shifting from preceptor to student. Our children are now having their own experiences, creating their own knowledge, and we have the pleasure of learning from them.

Last week, hanging around in my in-laws' kitchen with my son, I could tell that his grandparents felt just as I did: that it was a delight to listen to James discuss, with modest confidence, his thoughts about the election results. He knew things that we didn't know, things that we wanted to know, and he spoke to the point, not obnoxiously but coherently. Ten years ago, he would have been asking the questions. Now we were.

And, you know, I liked it.